Salt and Pepper&;#063;

Otherwise knows as "Shit and Puke" By Rusty Haight

The station was more or less the same as always, people spilling in and
out in every direction, going up and down the escalators, surrounded by
attractive ads for Whirlpool dishwashers. What an odd collection of
humanity brought together by public transit. All races, genders,
religions, sexual preferences, carrying all manners of communicable
diseases, all different kinds of hygiene, touching the different
surfaces, picking their faces, scratching their inflamed genitalia,
rubbing up against each other. Like clockwork, they came and went. Same
as it always had been, same as it would be. They would talk too loud,
wear too much perfume and block your path in the stairwell until time
stood still.
A bunch of kids sat on the steps with their hands out for change. They
held out a cardboard sign proclaiming: NEED $$$ FOR POT, SMOKES, BEER.
I appreciated their honest yet at the same time it made me care even
less that I gave them absolutely nothing.
Down the stairs there were kids with retainers and baseball hats and
crippled old ladies that smell of sour milk. Construction workers with
black fingernails, a wide variety of scars and acne, cysts and scabs,
concrete and steel in an underground maze.. I could hear the subway
cars go whoosing by, metal wheels clattering.
A group of girls about sixteen years old walked together in t-shirts
too small for them, exposing bare stomachs and pierced navels. At one
point in time I may have at least appreciated the skin. Now I just felt
sorry for their fathers.
About fifty cellular telephone conversations were going on at once,
all with equal importance.
"I'm at the station where are you?"
"No, those shoes don't match that dress."
"Don't buy, sell."
"Please shoot me, I'm an imbecile."
All chattering nonsense.
As I finally got down the stairs to the platform I could hear the
train just leaving and a loud commotion coming from the crowd of people
who had been waiting to board.
"Oh my god," repeated one woman over and over again in shock. Everyone
was in a state of panic. The calmer ones looked pale and sick. Some
were staring down at the track.
An old man started to lose his lunch. "Bleah," the contents of his
stomach hit the pavement. More people, having seen this began to join
in. soon half the crowd was barfing or they were doubled over, holding
their guts.
"What happened?" I ask some kid.
"Some guy jumped in front of the train."
"You're kidding me."
"Yeah, he just jumped and got smoked. Pulled under the train."
"Just now."
A second ago. The kid looked green but he was taking it well. I poked
my head out and looked down along the tracks. Along with bits of dirt
and debris and garbage there was a long red stripe of fresh blood and
chunks of skin. It had gotten all mashed up in the heels. Parents were
comforting their children, turning their eyes away, others were gawking
at the blood.
The subway officials soon came and told everyone to get away from the
tracks. Everything would be fine if they just moved back. People kept
discussing what they had seen, the sound it had made. The cops made it
there soon enough and started taking statements. The concensus; it was
a man, white, late thirties, kind of unkempt, straight hair, glasses,
clean-shaven. That was what I managed to pick up. Nobody knew who he
was or why he did it. He didn't say anything to anyone and he
definitely didn't slip or trip. He looked right at the train and jumped
in front of it.
"Maybe he was insane, I mean what a horrible way to die, getting all
ground up like that."
"The fire department was on their way now. They were starting to block
the area off and usher people out.
All the accounts police were similar "I didn't even notice him. Then I
saw him jump and get pulled under the train.
"I saw him," said one woman. "He had this crazy look in his eyes right
before he jumped."
"I wonder if he felt it," said a man. "If he died instantly or if he
had time to think about it."
He must have. He must have been able to hear his own bones snap. Too
bad anyhow. Hell of a mess. I kept listening to heresay and conjecture
as they came to scrape the meat off the tracks. People still had to get
to work.
A fat cop walked over to me and asked if I had seen anything.
"Naw," I said. "I was reading a newspaper and not paying
attention."
He told me to take the stairs back up to outside because they were
starting to shut the station down.
I nodded. "Have a good one." I said.
I was back on the street in no time breathing other people's
cigarettes, hearing their voices, looking at their faces. I thought of
the man that had jumped. I wondered if I had seen him pass me on the
street that day. I wondred if he'd thought about what he was going to
do. I wondered, had he planned that morning that this was how it was
going to end? Had he decided that today would be the day or had he just
stood on that platform, looked out at everything around him and decided
that he'd had enough.
A few teenagers tried to sell me drugs as I kept moving down the
street and turned the corner. Another guy with open sores on his face
asked if I wanted to buy his watch. He said that it was a nice watch.
Without the subway I realized that I had a long walk ahead of me to get
where I was going. I decided against the bus simply because I knew that
it would be full and I would have to stand and smell bad breathe and
get kicked in the shins the whole way.
I walked and kept thinking about that thirty-something caucasian male
and the extremly messy and very public way he'd taken his own life. I'd
have given anything to know what had gone through his head before that
train car did. Or did he think at all. Maybe he was just tired. Of the
faces of the trains, of himself.
I looked down at the water as I crossed the downtown bridge. It was a
cold, dark blue. The shore was littered with fact food wrappers.
I thought about the guts on the subway tracks. Maybe where he had gone
it didn't matter that he had gotten mangled and torn apart. Maybe he
was in a better place like they always said. And maybe he hadn't gone
anywhere at all. Maybe he was just dead and it was all over with.
Either way it didn't seem to matter much. I kept looking down at the
water as cars sped past. I wondered what it might feel like to fall
from the bridge. The short, exhilarating drop and the hard, unforgiving
landing. Death would be instant. I wouldn't feel anything at all. I
looked out at all the gas-guzzlers honking their horns and at the
factory towers belching smoke, then down at the cool, calm water below
and suddenly it didn't seem like such a bad option. I stopped walking a
spit and watched it fall, slowly before hitting the water below,
setting off a chain reaction of small ripples. I took another look at
the sky, then back at the water, closed my eyes and went for it.